Snow
by Heaven's Eagle
Summary: Lelouch is like snow. Beautiful to behold and beyond explanation; but snow only falls when it's too cold for rain.


**Plotbunnies eat my brain.**

**This is just a little scene my orange polka dot plotbunny decided to leave on my mental doorstep, and I figured why not? I'll see what you all think of it. It takes place outside Pendragon, during the timeskips at the end of R2. Doesn't really matter which one.  
**

* * *

It was snowing. It never snowed here. Yet the soft white flakes danced down from the thick clouds and graced the harsh ground with their peace. And standing shrouded in the white darkness was a single human, staring up and utterly motionless. He made no attempt to wipe the snow from his upturned face, made no attempt to look as regal as his position entitled him to – and for that, the stiff royal majesty of the throne softened like the snow, and became a sad beauty. Black hair, normally so silky, froze in messy spikes, the melted snow freezing in the chill of the air. He wore nothing more than simple peasants' clothes, soft and warm against his skin. Protecting that was a thin white cloak, warding the snow from his form. His arms hung limp at his sides, and he blinked only out of reflex as snowflakes came too near his eyes.

There were glowing runes in his eyes, casting a red light over his pale face and paler snow. Frozen on his cheeks, sparkling in his solitude, were tears he couldn't be allowed to shed.

Far above, he knew, the sun shone on the clouds in vain glory, but it was as he. The snow, beautiful and melancholy, would never see that glory. For under that, it would melt and fade away into nothing more than bittersweet memory. For all its beauty, and all the perfect chaos that it chose to fall with, the snow would die away from reality and thought, to be forgotten until it dared to eat the sun once more.

The human was no longer alone, though he did not know it yet. A new creature – not human, as the snow curled off her in tendrils of mist whenever it touched her skin – walked towards him, unseen in the black of thick white snow.

"Do you know why snow is white?" she asked, her voice light and clear like the peal of a bell. It cut through the soundless blanket that the snow laid thick on them. And in doing so, she cast yet one more blanket over the man who stood in the snow.

He lowered his head, closing his glowing eyes against the tears that gathered there. "Snow isn't white, C2," he murmured. His voice, lower than the depths of hell and more silent than the snow itself, didn't cut, nor did it carry. Rather, it was simply heard, as if he were speaking directly to you from no more than mere inches away. It did not matter where he really stood. "Snow is thin and fragile as glass, merely white in its blackness." He hesitated as the female walked closer. Amber eyes glittered in the dull nothing of snowfall, taking in the simple garb and beads of ice that clung to the other's cheeks. "But still, as I ever told you. I think snow is beautiful."

"Can you really do this?" the woman asked, dancing closer to the male. She seemed unconcerned by his plight, but the glimmer of those eyes sharpened as she spoke. Softly melting snowflakes embedded themselves in her hair, sleeking it down and making the long green strands shiny to see.

"I must," replied the man.

A few moments of snowy silence fell past them, beyond the reach of their lives now. Tall and elegant, the man raised his glowing eyes once more to the heavens, contemplating what waited for him there. The female, green hair slung around her form like a silken garment, reached him and touched her fingertips to his shoulder. "So you say," she murmured.

A low chuckle filled the air around them, and eyes – burning red like the eyes of a nightmare – pierced the female. "Would I that you really didn't care, C2," he told her softly, and she froze in her tracks. "My task is difficult enough without our contracts to add to my burden." There was no anger or bitterness in his voice; only a lonely acceptance of fate. Limply, he reached up one hand and touched his fingers to hers, savouring the contact.

"Would you feel better if I didn't?" she asked him curiously, and a twisted smile touched his lips. It seemed ironic, somehow, that the snow should intensify the silence of their voices.

"No." His reply was quiet, certain – but it contained no trace of happiness. "I merely said that it would make what lies ahead easier. But I would never ask you not to care now." For a few moments, she studied him; he was in profile to her, and the man's features seemed all the more defined for it. The striking tilt of his cheekbones blended into the arch of his nose, and the whole ensemble was held up by the dangerous slant his jaw etched into the snowfall. She cocked her head slightly to consider him a few moments more.

His next words – eloquent though they undoubtedly would be – were silenced by the woman's lips, touching against his in brief hesitation.

Caught off guard by the kiss – as he always, always was – the man turned his body to the female, and for several minutes, they quietly, delicately kissed in the snow. Then she stepped back from him with a smile like stage lights. The warmth was real, but it seemed no more than the false light of a truck's headlight's, screaming towards him on a highway.

"You have made it clear to me that you have no choice, Lelouch. Your reason for living is not the same as when we first met."

Grimly, the man with the glowing, runic eyes smiled at the crafty woman. "You are right, as always, C2." He turned to follow her as she danced backwards in the snow, retreating towards the invisible fortress that was now their home. "I no longer live for my sister. I live now that I may die."

Without a backwards glance, Lelouch abandoned the dim, white snow, and returned to the friend who would become his Death.

* * *

**Un-Beta'd.**


End file.
